Flayed Marsyas

This sculpture represents flayed Marsyas and is part of a group of two sculptures exhibited side by side at the Torlonia Marbles exhibit of 2021 in Villa Caffarelli. The couple created from scratch , "with an effect that should have been gruesome for the observer" (de Lachenal 2002 - exhibition catalog) is the Apollo and Marsyas from the Giustiniani collection. The Apollo (50, MT 463) was obtained - perhaps in the sixteenth century, or later at the behest of the Marquis - by assembling various parts of irrelevant sculptures, dating back to about the first century. AD The result is that of a standing figure with an accentuated weighting generated by the weight of the victim's epidermis held with the left arm. The right one, lowered, holds the remains of the knife. The Marsyasskinned (51, MT 464) is the result of heavy reworking - perhaps carried out in the wake of the tradition of anatomical studies and treatises published in the second half of the sixteenth century (de Lachenal 2002 - exhibition catalog) - of an original probably from the I-II century. AD which had the aim of bringing out, by digging, in a dramatic and violent way the musculature that in the beginning was not so defined. The additions that identify the subject are modern: the syrinx (the musical instrument) used in the unfortunate challenge to Apollo, the palm of the torture and also the head.